Arts watch. Dance review.

Hubbard Street Turns Celebration Into Class Act

There were no speeches, thank-yous, pre-curtain salutes or even a more understandable bow for a young choreographer who just quit the troupe to dance in Holland and returned to sit in the audience Tuesday to watch his world premiere.

Instead, the curtain rose on a lustrous program, presented confidently, beautifully and without comment, other than hollers from an enthusiastic Auditorium Theatre audience. In an art where multiple curtain calls are a prerequisite, where emotion flows all too quickly, silence can be golden. Just the dance, ma'am.

It's remarkable that a company associated for so long with an all-American signature like "The '40s" is now in a position to open with a work as exotic, sophisticated and seething with Old Worldly passion as Nacho Duato's brilliant "Jardi Tancat," or "Enclosed Garden." Despite the title, this is not a piece perfumed with gardenias. The garden here seems figuratively one of unreliable horticulture.

Using a score of Catalonian folk music, Spanish-born Duato has his six dancers crouching in a corner, their backs to the audience, rising as if out of the earth. They end almost as they begin, back on their knees, facing us this time, their mouths dipping in mime to the ground as if in desperate hunger. In between, on a set decorated by a row of driftwood poles, they enact a dance that adheres to a loving, graceful design while crammed with inflamed, peculiar gestures and partnerings.

Some of this Duato achieves through repeated use of the full body, the dancers bending from their waists to suddenly touch the floor and spring back or falling down altogether. They raise their arms to the sky, only to dip them back downward, in a tension of hope and futility, and in one brief section the women sidestep across the floor rapidly while touching the ground as if planting seeds. Flush with hints of Spanish folk dance, lyrically echoing the guitar strains of the music, "Jardi Tancat" is technically rich, wondrously performed and powerfully dark.

Another company premiere worth celebrating is Jiri Kylian's giddy laugh riot, "Sechs Tanze." Set to Mozart, colored by mock neoclassical wigs and Kylian's own goofy set pieces, "Sechs Tanze" is an elaborately choreographed joke, not so much mocking ballet and ballroom, like other pieces in this genre, as something idiotic and indefinable in human nature.

A disappearing back wall, of sorts, and two giant, funereal hoop skirts that variably allow for decapitation and men in black drag, are part of the fun. The mood is like that of David Parsons' "The Envelope," but the dancing is much more intricate. Among the memorable moments is a short-lived duet between carrot-topped Laura Haney Gomez (luminous throughout Tuesday's performance) and her husband, David.

Mario Alberto Zambrano, who now dances with Kylian's Netherlands troupe, leaves behind as a choreographer "Link," a torrid, expressive trio that bears a little resemblance in moves to Duato's "Jardi," which unfortunately preceded it.

Still, it proved an impressive debut, full of sensual, slow moves for Joseph Mooradian, Marla Fenske and Gregory Sample, while gradually building to speedy spins and a surprise ending in which the dancers leap upward and fall dramatically to the floor.

The program ended with "Nine Sinatra Songs," a perfect anniversary valentine.